Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 102620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 513(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 342(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 513(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 342(@300wpm)
I gasp. “Really?” She looks at me with her eyebrows pulled together.
“Yeah, I think so. Mom!” she shouts for her mother, who comes out of the kitchen a couple of seconds later.
She looks around the room, spotting Everleigh sitting with me. “Must we shout?” she scolds her, coming to the table.
“Sorry, I was too lazy to get up and come and get you,” she admits. “Look at this.” She holds up the yearbook and Ms. Maddie’s eyes go big.
“Isn’t that a blast from the past,” she declares as she grabs it and opens it, seeing the teachers first. “I had this teacher, and I think he’s still teaching.” She points at one of the guys, laughing, then goes through a couple more. “This is like four or five years after I graduated,” she says. “What are you doing with it?”
“Did you know the Dyson family?” I ask, and she nods.
“I graduated a year before the brother did,” she says. “I want to say his name was Kevin, but I could be mistaken.”
“What happened to them?” I sit practically at the edge of my seat.
“There was talk about one of the sisters falling in love with someone from the wrong side of town and the father was having none of it, so he up and moved everyone away,” she relays.
“Which sister?” My hands are practically shaking.
“I think the older one,” she hesitates, not sure. “He was from up north somewhere.”
“Do you know where they went to?”
“I want to say Jefferson County, but I’m not really sure.” She shrugs. “The mom came from big money,” she fills me in. “Her father owned the newspaper in town, along with a couple of them from all over the United States.”
“Well, that makes sense now,” I mumble, thinking the story of me being left was only run once and nothing else after that. “I think he sold it a couple of years ago, but I’m not sure.” She looks up from the book. “What’s with all the questions?”
I smile at both of them, the tears escaping without me even knowing. “Fiona Dyson is my birth mother.”
Chapter 34
Caleb
I’m going down the ladder in the barn when I hear a truck door slam. Looking over at the open door, I see her running inside.
Her blond hair is flying in the wind. “Hey,” I say when I get to the last step and turn toward her, “this is a surprise.”
“I know,” she warbles, and I see tears running down her face.
“What happened?”
“I found him,” she says between sobs. “I found my father.”
“What?” I ask. “I left you two hours ago, and you were going to start working for the day.”
“I know, but you know yesterday, when I came home from the bakery and Ms. Maddie told me she thought they moved to Jefferson County?” I nod as she continues. “So this morning, I went online and searched up their alumni and just wrote on the message board, asking if anyone from the graduating class had their yearbook and if I could ask them something.”
“Okay.”
“Well, one girl messaged me back maybe ten minutes later.” She puts her hand on my chest. “And I asked her if she could send me a picture of Sonia and Fiona Dyson,” she explains, and she takes a deep breath in, “and she wrote his initials in her yearbook.”
“Who did?” I ask as she takes a second to catch her breath.
“Fiona,” she says, “my mother is definitely Fiona.”
“How do you know for sure?” I rub my hands up and down her arms. She holds out her phone, and I look down to see Fiona Dyson, her yearbook quote next to her name, “Nothing is what it seems to be. Love will prevail all, or that is what you keep telling me. C.B.”
“The girl who sent me the picture,” she adds while I stare at the picture, “said there was some gossip about the two of them running away with each other. But she wasn’t sure.”
“Does she know him?” I ask her and she shakes her head.
“He was a year older than Fiona, but like she said, no one really saw them together. She came to town in the twelfth grade and didn’t really have a friend group she hung out with and then the next year everyone went off to college. She said she pretty much stayed to herself.”
“Baby, do you know how many C.B.’s there are?”
“I know. I called the forensic genealogist and gave him the initials, and he thinks his last name is probably Boston. My great-grandmother married an Edward Boston and they had a couple of kids so…” She closes her eyes. “I’m so freaking close.”
“You are so very close, baby.” She smiles at me. “Are you going to call Fiona now?”
“No, I called Sonia. For sure she will tell her, if she wanted to get in touch with me, she would have.”